


For the Unlucky Ones

by MistyBeethoven



Series: "Yes, I Really Am This Pathetic!" or "How to Say I Love You With a Story" [75]
Category: A Walk in the Clouds (1995)
Genre: Babies, Children, Death, Dreams and Nightmares, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Family, Guilt, Marriage, Napa Valley, Nightmares, Orphans, POV Third Person, Parenthood, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-War, Remembrance Day, Soldiers, Survivor Guilt, Veterans Day, War, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:41:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27511720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistyBeethoven/pseuds/MistyBeethoven
Summary: Years after returning from WWII, Sergeant Paul Sutton still suffers from nightmares and guilt concerning the death of a fellow soldier. Waking up from another bad dream, he finally tells his wife about how one carelessly uttered remark can haunt a man, but soon learns that the only war he is still fighting is unnecessary and already won.A sequel to "The Last Piece of Chocolate" in honor of Remembrance Day/Veterans Day.
Relationships: Paul Sutton/Betty Sutton, Sgt Paul Sutton/Me, Victoria Aragon/Paul Sutton
Series: "Yes, I Really Am This Pathetic!" or "How to Say I Love You With a Story" [75]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1589944
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	For the Unlucky Ones

**Author's Note:**

> This story was inspired by something Keanu Reeves said in an interview for "A Walk in the Clouds":
> 
> "Through my imagination, I was trying to figure out what makes my character so sensitive. Why does he care about life so much? What does he want? I imagined this experience where I was coming up toward this Japanese stronghold with my partner. I imagined that he was beside me, and then I heard this sound. And I looked over and... his jaw was gone. And there was all this blood, and he was making these sounds."
> 
> This is in no way what he was thinking of. But he's an unwilling co-writer for this one. I just wish it could have been better.
> 
> But for Remembrance Day and for everyone who died to honor freedom and save lives, you have my gratitude forever. :D <3

At times, Paul Sutton would think how lucky he was, though many of the men back in his unit would hardly have seen it that way.

Growing up as an orphan, following his service in the Pacific, he had returned to his wife Betty in San Francisco only to learn that his wife had not read the multitude of letters which he had sent to her and had been his lifeline to survival during the Second World War. What would have made things even worse was that she had also fallen in love with someone else during his absence. However, this hadn't been too bad at the time since he had fallen in love with someone else too. Victoria Aragon, the pregnant daughter of a stern Mexican vineyard owner in Napa Valley had stolen his heart while he had pretended to be her husband.

Things had seemed quite blissful for a while until the patriarch had discovered the deception, the vineyard had burnt down and the real father of the baby had swept into the Valley, declaring his love for the beautiful mother of his unborn child.

Feeling particularly luckless, Paul Sutton had resumed his profession of door to door chocolate salesman only to find himself breaking down in tears when he had tried to sell a box of the confectionery to a sweet faced, overweight artist's assistant down the road from the Aragon vineyard. The woman, Erin, had invited him in, fearing that having a big girl turn down the last chocolate in the box had been the source of his sadness. He had ended up explaining the real cause and had subsequently been invited to stay with her to see if his fortune with Victoria improved any before her nuptials.

It hadn't with Victoria Aragon but his luck certainly had taken a turn for the better when Erin and he had fallen in love instead. Although it had taken no small effort to convince the similarly unlucky-in-love Erin that they were destined to be with each other.

But he had been at victorious (and Victoria-less) a few months later when Erin and he had been wed in a small but pretty and heartfelt little ceremony.

Five years later, he would be sitting in the small Valley home that he shared with his wife and pondering the many blessings life had eventually presented to him. Their three year old daughter, Dessie, would be curled up and sleeping in his lap, while their nine month old son would be similarly asleep in Erin's arms when his thoughts would turn to how he had been so blessed following his spell of misfortunes and he would thank God for that last piece of chocolate.

If there was one bit of misfortune left to be found in his life, Paul knew it was in the realm of his own dreams. While his children could sleep easy, surrounded by two parents that loved them (something as an orphan he had never truly experienced,) his own dreams were far from untroubled.

Sometimes his bad dreams seemed to be the price he paid for being one of the lucky ones.

In his nightmares, he was often back in the Pacific, trapped in the 7th Infantry where death seemed the one giving out the orders every day in a language not understood. All you could do was pray that your foot managed to find the right place to step, the enemy had bad eyesight and you didn't get yourself killed. Or even worse: get everbody in the unit killed, a sin which you would then have to live with for the rest of your life.

Mostly the man's dreams seemed to be memories. Sometimes they were an odd mingling of truth and fantasy and on those occassions, Sutton would wake up confused as to what was real and what had only been his mind's nighttime imaginings. Then he would reach out and touch Erin: his warm, soft and very honest reminder of the life that he had been given and not the death and nightmares that his trauma made him feel that he deserved far more.

At certain times, the dreams would fade and leave altogether, making him feel that they were gratefully gone for good, only to return again, leaving him to feel like they were like his old squadron, merely regrouping and trying to find another way to lay seige to his mind and claim victory.

What their final goal was remained a mystery to him. Madness? Despair? Apathy? He had felt all at some point or another and yet none of them had been enough for the dreams to be satisfied and leave him alone.

Death could not be their battle plan, Sergeant Paul Sutton understood. For then there would be no battle to fight. As a former soldier, the man understood this bitterly well. All these years later, he was not at true peace. There was some aspect of him which was always on guard, still fighting a war that had thankfully long ago been won. And this was probably the most bitter and ironic part of it all:

He had won the peace for many but never again would he truly feel it for himself.

One night in November, Paul found himself, groaning himself to a state of wakefulness. Erin was holding on to him, well used to his night terrors by now, and he heard her voice from behind his closed lids, just as he felt her touch.

"Paul," she said soothingly. "Paul, it's okay. Shhh..."

He followed her voice to full consciousness, leaving death and the smell of blood, exploded bombs and fired off guns into that world that disappeared as soon as he opened his eyes.

Turning to see his wife's large, concerned eyes in the small light afforded by a crescent moon in an open window, Paul touched her face to fully weight himself back to reality and then felt shame creeping in as he realized that he had woken her from her own sleep. The baby did not sleep for long and they both were usually up and down constantly each night, but more often his wife whom nursed him. She needed sleep, he condemned himself and quickly sat on the edge of the bed, feeling that sometimes Erin was looking after three children and not just two.

The compassionate woman followed him, however, sitting instantly by his side. Worry was still evident, as was her love, as she touched his face gently, the back of her plump fingers stroking his cheek and being offered little more than the dampness of his sweat for her effort. As if to give her more, he grabbed her smooth hand and kissed it.

Then the image of Frank Teischer returned and the realization of how the man was lying in a grave somewhere without the lips he had used to kiss the countless girls he had often bragged about during their time of service together.

Paul flinched and looked away, only to feel Erin resting her head on his shoulder and placing her arm around his waist.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Want to."

They were the key words that his wife would use anytime that the subject would veer anywhere close to the war and his memories of it. She undoubtedly sensed that not everything was horrible about the experience but acknowledged that most of it was. His _want_ was what interested her or rather his _need_. With her asking in such a way, it was an invitation he could either accept or decline; she always left it to him to make the choice. Sometimes he accepted, sometimes he had refused but it was always with relief that he had given his love to a woman whom didn't push him into discussing things that he did not _want_ _to_.

He knew her strength. She had already suffered two miscarriages before the birth of their daughter and son which had both not been particularly easy pregnancies. Often he had been worried for her especially when her labour had started. But she had given birth to two beautiful children, creating, at last, the family he had longed for throughout his life with neither parents or siblings. He knew she was strong, anything he could tell her she would accept with that same strength.

But there were some things that he did not particularly _want_ to relive.

Frank Teischer had always been one of them.

This night, with the moon grinning in the midnight blue sky over Napa, however, Paul thought that maybe the time had finally come to unbury old ghosts.

Even those lying unwhole in a cemetery in France.

"There was this soldier in my unit," he started, his voice hoarse and sounding like it was still left on the pillow, partially asleep in that world of memories and unreality. "His name was Frank Teischer..."

"Is that who..." she briefly interrupted and then looked guilty.

"Yes," he patted her back, letting her know that it had been expected and was all right. "He was around my age, always talking and bragging. The other guys used to call him 'Motor Mouth' because he wouldn't shut up...it's like he couldn't stop himself. Some people are just like that, I guess."

Erin looked up at him and smiled. It was a soft little smile, one that told him she was listening but that she knew not to offer one that was too bright now for something bad was surely coming. She knew it from the sweat on his body, from the cries he was struggling to make as he was pulled out of the dreaming memory and from his own smile now tinged with sadness.

"We liked him but we didn't too. It was like that; sometimes you liked a fellow soldier but sometimes you didn't. Espescially when they were always on about themselves, you know?"

She nodded, keeping her comments to herself.

"But we were still all in it together and we suffered each other together," he continued. "We put up with Frank 'Motor Mouth' Teischer as best we could for as long as he was with us.

"One day, we were sent to a Japanese stronghold on one of these small islands in the Pacific...I remember that it seemed so unbelievable that this one military place on some stupid little island nobody in 'Cisco would have even heard of would be so instrumental to winning the war..."

Paul shook his head, still in disbelief, even though he was thousands of miles away and days had come and died since he was informed of the mission. "But we were sent there anyway. And you could never know. The Captain...well, he kept telling us that every battle mattered and the war could be won or lost in some godforsaken corner of the world."

Erin's hand rested on his back, stroking it gently and he breathed in deeply before resuming.

"Frank was paired with me to flank it from the left. We were supposed to be quiet. But even then he couldn't keep his mouth shut. It's like he _had_ to talk. Now, I can understand it was because it helped calm him down. Maybe hearing himself talk proved to him that he was still alive more than anything else. Or maybe he just wanted somebody to remember him when he died..."

Paul swallowed painfully, too much air, guilt and sadness travelling down a clenched throat. "And that happened soon enough. I remember, about five minutes before, I turned to him and said 'Damnit, will you just close your mouth for five lousy minutes?' Well, he was quiet after that. Everything was quiet. Until a bang happened about five damn minutes later..."

Tears stung Paul Sutton's eyes. It was what used to happen when the smoke and dirt would be hovering about five feet from the ground, caused by an explosion, gunfire or the trampling of a hundred soldiers feet from both sides of a war. "I turned around and there was Frank without his mouth...his jaw had been blasted clean off...No. That's not right. There was nothing _clean_ about it. Blood was just gushing out...spilling everwhere; even on the gun that was still shaking in his hands."

His wife's arms returned to his waist and she held him tighter, offering him some of her comforting softness and strength.

"Frank looked at me with these big scared green eyes, like he hadn't even realized what had happened yet, just that _something_ was wrong. Then it was like he started to try to talk...like he knew his five minutes were up. Only nothing came out but these sounds. Oh...God...I can still hear them..."

Erin kissed his shoulder and then quickly brought his head down to her breasts, rocking back and forth and stroking his hair. He had seen her do it several times with Dessie and it wasn't the first time that she had done it with him either. But it was the first time that it could not completely blot out the pain or make everything better.

"Erin, he couldn't talk anymore!" Paul Sutton wailed. "There was nothing left to talk with! The base of his tongue was just hanging there and moving about and I remember this thought going through my mind: 'Well, he'll have to shut up now.' And I don't know why it was there and I didn't want it, it wasn't mine, but it flashed through my mind as I ran to him. I pulled us both to the ground, afraid of more fire and trying to save him, even though I knew he didn't have any hope left. I mean, I'd stepped on what was left of his jaw on my way to him! It was on the bottom of boot, all gore and flesh."

He was making the top of his wife's thin cotton nightdress wet with his tears and his spittle but he couldn't help it anymore than he could have prevented the vile thought which he had not wanted from flashing through his mind.

"Frank...he was trying to tell me something...one last thing before he died. And I have no idea what it was...I keep wondering _what_ he was trying to tell me...I see it in my dreams, Erin. Sometimes he asks me, 'Can I talk now?' and other times it's 'Is this better now Seargent Sutton?' And...and other times, I'm the one with no jaw and Frank 'Motor Mouth' Teischer just keeps talking like nothing has happened...and then I wake up and try to do the same."

He nuzzled his face into the softness of her breasts, an act he had committed hundreds of times in sexual bliss but one performed now to remind himself once more that he had escaped a small island in the Pacific to be blessed with the wife he loved with his whole being and whose breasts were full and heavy with the milk she would feed to their infant son.

Erin cradled his head, kissing the top of it once, as she rocked back and forth. "You're still fighting a war aren't you, Paul?" she finally asked. "Inside of your soul?"

He nodded, holding on to her more fiercely.

"And blame is the artillary they use against you?"

"Yes," Seargant Paul Sutton answered and then saw the face of his enemy. "Only...I use it on myself."

A few more tender caresses given in understanding.

"Well, the guns are empty then," she whispered and stroked his hair gently behind his ear. "You aren't to blame, Paul."

His breathing quietened and his tears stopped flowing as quickly as before. "But I told him..."

"You told him to be quiet. You were trying to save his life. There was no way you could have known. He realizes that; wherever he is he _knows_ that. God will make sure that he does."

"Erin I..."

"I've seen you, Paul Sutton. You are the kindest most good natured man I have ever seen. The way you are with the children...you have the patience of a Saint."

"You know me now," he argued, backing away to sit up straight and look at her. "You didn't know me before."

She looked at him with a smile which was no less sad but which was far more hopeful after having heard the full story. "People don't change that much. They become harder, colder or sometimes they melt a little. But they don't turn into something that they never held inside of them to begin with. Roses get thorns; they don't turn into dandelions. And their beauty still remains. You have nothing to feel guilty for. The blame is not yours. Let it go and put the guns away. The blame lies with those whom start wars that kill innocent men like Frank Teischer...and damage good men like Paul Sutton."

Paul studied her moonlit cast eyes, the whites of which stood out in the otherwise darkness of the room. "What was he going to tell me?" he asked.

She shook her head sadly but her smile never left her sweet face. "That was then. This is now. Now he would only say thank you."

"Why?" 

"Because you haven't forgotten him," she said, pressing her forehead to his. "You _remember_."

Thinking of words formerly spoken, ones that theorized that maybe the fallen soldier had only wanted to be remembered, Sutton felt that, while battles might sometimes be relived within him, that the war of his self blame had finally found its cessation.

Be would always remember Frank. It was assured.

Paul smiled at his wife and embraced her lovingly. As their lips met, in what both realized was the first step in what would eventually become the act of love, the baby in the next room began to cry and Erin sighed. He watched her stand up from the bed and then look down at him, with the same sweet and kind smile on her childlike face.

"Want to come with me?" she asked, now knowing the answer to a question she had asked many times before but had never received the answer to because Paul had not wanted to.

"I want to," he replied, standing up and slipping a hand around her back.

Together they headed to the room of a baby named Frank Sutton, their hearts filled with respect, love and remembrance for all of the unlucky ones.

**Author's Note:**

> Dear Keanu;
> 
> I wish this could have been better for you. I didn't start the day off too bad. But then things went downhill with my sister. I could explain it here but it all sounds so stupid. In any case, I feel really bad right about now. Everything has been a struggle recently. She's my sister and she should know that. I don't know why she can't stop herself before hurting me.
> 
> But this is the real note I wanted to put:
> 
> Do you remember the minute of silence held in class on this day, Keanu? I always thought of my grandfather's brother who died in the first world war. Grandpa had postcards from him and I used to look at them all the time and wonder what he was like. His mother had known when he had died because his photograph had fallen off the wall that day without any reason. She knew right then that she had lost her oldest son.
> 
> During that minute, I'd think of him with the lost.
> 
> I remember a veteran came to class one day too, though. He was missing several fingers on one hand and I thought he must have lost them in service. However, when a little boy asked him outright about it, he just smiled, laughed and said it had happened in an accident in his toolshed. Goes to show, you never can tell.
> 
> I still try to observe that minute of silence. It's not always at the right time but I hope that still counts.
> 
> Much love,  
> Erin  
> XO XO  
> :D <3


End file.
